This week in Memphis history: December 13-19

2010: In The Memphis News cover story on new leadership at The Regional Medical Center at Memphis, MED president and CEO Reginald Coopwood said, “It was somewhat daunting in that, ‘Am I the closer, the guy who’s coming in to close the organization down, or is there an opportunity?’”

1984: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band played two shows at the Mid-South Coliseum on the “Born in the USA” tour.

1963: Memphis City Schools leaders told the Memphis Housing Authority they wanted to build a new school in what was the Jackson Avenue Urban Renewal area, north of Alabama Avenue and West of Jones Street. The school system wanted the new school to replace three schools in the area that had closed – Pope School on North Seventh Street, Merrill School on Jones and Christine School on Market Street.

Meanwhile that same week, federal officials held a public hearing on the still-tentative plans for a new bridge across the Mississippi River that Tennessee and Arkansas officials had filed a building permit for. The Memphis end of the Hernando DeSoto Bridge that opened 10 years later bisected the neighborhood where school leaders sought to build the new school.

1883: Deputy Sheriff A.K. Hancock raided a large dice game on Presidents Island in the wing of an abandoned prison farm, one of the agricultural uses on the island before it became a site for heavy industry.